The realization that the show is actually coming to an end has been hitting me over the past week or so. With Damon and Carlton constantly on Twitter talking about how the show is wrapped, and then having their last ever Official LOST Podcast, those were really the first things that made me come to terms with it all. Then on Sunday I became aware that in one week it would all be over. Now, with the penultimate episode out of the way, there's nothing left but the finale. Two and a half hours, then nothing more. I couldn't help but get goosebumps during one of the commercial breaks when ABC played a promo for the finale event on Sunday. It's a weird feeling, trying to deal with the end of LOST, because on one hand I've been eagerly anticipating this season, and some closure to the story for a long time, but on the other hand, once it's over, that's it. There will be no more stories to learn, no more plot twists to debate. The entire story will be out there, and there will be no more additions to it. For me, I always have a hard time with the end of a TV show I like, because I really like to immerse myself in that show's universe, and I hate to think that we'll never learn any more about that universe ever again. A show ending places a stopping point on what we can know. Sure, the episodes are always there to be rewatched, and that's certainly a nice thing to be able to do, but it kind of sucks knowing that you can't get anything new the second time around.

At least LOST is going out with a bang. We've got the pilot being aired on Saturday, then a two-hour clip show beginning at (I believe) 6:00 CST, then the two and a half hour series finale, and then I think Jimmy Kimmel's got his LOST show coming on at around 11. So all in all you're looking at seven and a half hours of LOST programming this weekend, which should certainly be enough to immerse yourself with. And then after all of it's over, there is always my project over at Chronologically LOST, which is coming along nicely and I expect to post an update over there in the next few days.

I don't expect this to be a long post today, because the show is really at that point where it is what it is. As was expected, this week's episode was a catalyst for setting everything up for the finale. There was a lot going on, but not a lot of room left for speculation and theories. We seem to have a pretty good idea of where things are headed, and what to look forward to on Sunday. There are a few things I want to touch on, but other than that I thought I would just post some hopes and expectations I have for the finale, and take a look back at some of the major questions I had or talked about in my Season 6 Preview post way back earlier this year.

Looking back at that preview post, my big three questions were: What's the deal with John Locke? Is Jacob dead? And what's the deal with the Nemesis? Well, I guess we have a fairly complete answer regarding Locke. He's dead and buried, and his persona is being mimicked by the Nemesis. We may get some kind of redemption from Locke in the Sideways World, but real world John Locke? I think his story is finished. As far as Jacob goes, I wasn't really sure about the idea of him dying the same episode that we first finally see him, but it certainly makes a lot more sense now with all we've seen of him, and I'm okay with it. We know that he's dead, we know why he's dead, and we know what his purpose is. Finally, we have the Nemesis. Who is he? What's his relation to Jacob? What influence has he had on the show? We've had lots of information on this topic. We know that at one time he, or at least part of him, was Jacob's twin brother, and that now he is the smoke monster, trying to escape from the island, which according to numerous people would be very, very bad. His influence goes deep on the island, from a total manipulation of John Locke and Benjamin Linus, to...who knows how far. Perhaps he was responsible for the purge of the Dharma Initiative. Perhaps he was responsible for the death of the Army troops that came to the island in the 1950s. We'll never know definitively which cookie jars he had his hands in, but it is fun to look back at the island's history and think about when he might have influenced something that we've seen.

I asked what the smoke monster was, exactly, and I think we've had about as complete of an answer as we're going to get. Personally, I would still like to know why there was an ancient Egyptian picture of the god Anubis with what appears to be the Smoke Monster in the lower levels of the wall outside the Temple, and bigger picture would like a little insight into the Egyptian mythology that we see all over the island, but at this point I don't have high hopes of that being explained. As it is, we did get a good answer of who the smoke monster is, and why it was 'released' onto the island. We probably won't know everything about it or its origins, but the picture's much clearer than it was at the beginning of the season.

The numbers. Ah, the numbers. I wasn't ever expecting any kind of 'ultimate explanation' as to what the numbers are, and how they relate to everything that we've seen so far. It might have been nice to know why exactly they were recorded onto the radio tower on the island at some point in time, but it's not really that big of a deal. We saw the numbers in the cave, and learned that they were assigned to the six remaining Candidates to replace Jacob. That's about as big of a correlation as we're going to get, and I at least appreciate the fact that they tried to tie them to something island related. Good enough for me.

Adam & Eve? Check and check. I am a little disappointed they didn't make it Nikki & Paulo.

Some other things I wasn't expecting answers to: Walt. Maybe we'll get a quick cameo of him in the Sideways World (although that's doubtful since he's still all of 10 in 2004 and in real life he's pushing 35, so it might look awkward), but as I said before, he's done. Unfortunate that they never fully fleshed out his story. The survivors we saw the Others kidnap? Cindy & the kids? We surprisingly got an answer to this one. While their present whereabouts are currently unknown, we at least saw them again, knew that they were alive, so kudos on that one. And then there's the damn food drops. All I wanted was for Charles Widmore to reveal to Desmond that he was the reason Desmond ended up on the island. He set him up from the get go in his race around the world so that he would end up there, so that he would push the button. And that's why the food drops continued for the hatch; because he knew Desmond was in there and wanted to keep up the charade of having to push the button. This is what I wanted to happen, what should have happened. But it certainly doesn't look like I'm going to get that now. However, maybe if I keep talking about it happening enough, people will start to think that it really did take place. In that case, I'm sure glad we finally found out that Charles Widmore was behind all those food drops. What a surprise!

A few more. Claire? Obviously we've see her again, she doesn't appear to be dead, just hanging out with the Nemesis. But that's not to say she won't end up dead by the end of the show. Desmond & Penny's fate? Not fully decided yet, but I'm guessing whatever it is it's probably not good. Desmond was brought to the island to make a sacrifice, the Nemesis seems to want to use him as such, he may get his happy ending with Penny, but I wouldn't put money on it. Finally, we have the future time flash with Sawyer, Juliet & co. We saw them all in an outrigger, being shot at by a mysterious group of people in another outrigger, and ultimately Juliet shooting one of them right before they flashed to another time period. It's something I've been looking forward to all season, especially since I've been putting together LOST's master timeline. Sadly, we're not getting an answer on this. Long story short, Damon & Carlton said in an interview that at the time, they knew exactly who was in the boat, and who was shot, and how that was to play out. Unfortunately, when this season rolled around, they were unable to recreate the scene as they wanted it to happen without it being too contrived, so they ended up having to scrap the scene from playing out from the other boat's perspective. Brutal. Instead it will go into that vault of LOST mysteries that will never be answered. Also, if anyone has any bright ideas as to where I can put that time flash into the timeline, I'm still taking suggestions. Shoot me an e-mail.

So that's me looking back. Looking forward, there are only a few things I would really like to see resolved in the last two and a half hours.

-Character Resolution. I don't need some Lord of the Rings-type epilogue where we see how all of our characters ended up after the show's climax. All I want is for us to have some knowledge as to what their fates will be, so when the show ends I'm not stuck sitting there trying to figure out what's going to happen to everyone still on the island. I feel pretty confident in this happening, as Damon & Carlton have stated repeatedly in interviews over the past few months that one of their key goals is to give viewers a satisfying ending to the characters' stories.

-Sideways World Correlation. I don't expect we'll ever get the full details on the Sideways World, what it's supposed to be, exactly, how it works, etc. Which is fine. We can leave that world as an ambiguous place. The one thing I do want to be able to take away from it is its relationship with our present day world. We have been shown this world all season. Why? What does it have to do with anything? And I don't want to hear about how it's supposed to let us look at a world where the Incident worked the way Jack planned for it to work. Showing me some made up world based on a decision that didn't happen, that feels like a waste of time. But giving me some kind of correlation to what we're seeing now, giving it a purpose to justify why they've spent several hours of the final season on this other universe, that's what I want. I'm hoping we get something along those lines.

Hmm, actually I can't really think of anything else. I guess I must feel like things are mostly resolved. Fair enough. Let's touch on some quick hits from this week's show:

-Whether you've loved or hated this season's episodes, you can't deny the frequent and almost always effective throwbacks to past seasons. At the beginning of the episode, when there was wreckage washing up on the beach, I immediately recognized the music from Season 1, and maybe it was even from the Pilot. They've really been able to ride the nostalgia train throughout the season, especially in the flash sideways where they're able to rediscover certain relationships, and it's been some of my favorite stuff of the season.

-There was something interesting brought up on a podcast I listen to regarding Jacob. I went on a number of episodes ago about how Jacob may be the perceived "good" guy between he and the Nemesis, but he's not all good. Then I talked about how he brought people to the island against their will, etc. Well, so this week we were down to our final four candidates, Jack, Sawyer, Hurley and Kate. Jacob wanted to offer what he never had, and told them that they could choose who was to take over for him. An interesting aspect to all of this that I hadn't thought about was the fact that, while they were all initially brought to the island by Jacob, they either came back to the island, or chose to remain on the island by their own choice. Jack went back to the island because he was a broken man off of it. Kate went back to find Claire. Hurley went back because he felt like he was supposed to. Sawyer never left the island, but was supposed to, in 1974, with Juliet, and chose to stay. So you really can't fault Jacob for forcing them to become his replacement, because one way or another those four made the choice to be on that island, and ultimately they had the choice of deciding who would become the next Jacob.

-Clearly, even in the second-to-last episode, I can't stop looking for plot twists. From the time Jack volunteered to be Jacob's replacement to when Jack drank the water, I kept thinking that this was all playing out uneventfully, and that made me suspicious. I kept waiting for Jack to all of a sudden get shot in the chest by someone, or to somehow die right before he took over. Or for there to be a debate about who was going to take over, instead of Jack volunteering and everyone else just staying back and letting him (Although I did enjoy Sawyer's line about Jack's 'God complex'). I'll probably still be a little wary about all of this until the show is actually over, because I'm a little surprised that things played out that easily.

-I really liked the scene with Jacob and the remaining Candidates. He's sort of in his last moments on the island, so it's effectively his time to say what needs to be said. I liked his explanation of why they were Candidates, especially because it will forever leave the idea of whether it was Sun or Jin that was a Candidate ambiguous and up for debate, and I also really liked his explanation for why Kate was crossed off. I don't remember if I brought this up before after "The Candidate" or not, I don't think I did, but I read an astute observation about how the remaining four Candidates were also the same four people that Ben had Michael take from camp at the end of Season 2 and deliver to the Others. It's probably just a coincidence, but I still thought it was kind of neat.

-There's some debate going around if Richard is dead or not, and I can't help but be skeptical at the idea. Two big things that lead me to believe otherwise. First, Jacob made it so that he can't die. I don't know if that all of a sudden changed because Jacob's dead, but I don't believe it has, so I'm not sure why we're supposed to all of a sudden think that he can die. And second, I don't think the Nemesis can kill Richard. If he could, don't you think he would have already? General rule of thumb on LOST is that, if you didn't see someone die, chances are they're probably not dead. Now, this may not apply to people like Frank, or those that may have perished in the Great Flaming Arrow Attack of 1954, but for significant characters like Richard, we need to see some kind of lack of breathing, his head falling limply to the side, or preferably a death certificate. Otherwise, he's not dead.

-Okay, so here is the great Charles Widmore, former leader of the Others, rich and successful entrepreneur, very powerful man. And what is his last defense against the Nemesis? Go hide in the little room behind Ben's bookshelf and hope he doesn't find you? That's it? That's the best you could come up with? Where's Horace's house with the cool hidden entrance to the caves that we saw back in the 70s? Obviously you knew that those existed. But no, instead you go hide in the closet of the one guy on the island most likely to sell you out and/or get you killed. Way to go.

-You better find a better hiding place than Charles did, Miles, because with Tina Fey out of the picture, I think you're all that's left of the fringe characters unless we see Cindy and the kids pop up in the jungle somewhere. At least he had the right idea by taking off, if he had stuck around I have a feeling he might be laying there next to Tina Fey.

-So the Nemesis wants to destroy the island, and he needs Desmond to do it. Hmm. I can only assume this has something to do with the Light on the island, but I'm sure the Nemesis knows more about the details on that than he's telling us. But, since we know about the electromagnetic properties of the island, and we know that this energy is most likely related somehow to the Light given the well the Nemesis dug right by the Light, and we know that Desmond is capable of encountering large amounts of electromagnetic energy, I think it's safe to infer that the Nemesis' plans involve perhaps pushing Desmond into the Light, or having him do something to it that will result in the Light going out. He couldn't kill the remaining Candidates, and now Jack is the new Jacob, so since that line of thought is out, I guess it's time to take down the whole island.

-Kate was looking pretty pale there for a while, got my hopes up. Sadly Jack is actually a good doctor, so he didn't seem too concerned with the wound. Damn. On the bright side, I think we have more deaths yet to go, so there's still hope!

-Moving over to the Flash Sideways world, we still don't know what, exactly is going to happen, but it certainly appears that everything's going down at this concert at the museum. Miles, Charlotte, and Faraday will be there (perhaps we might get a Lapidus sighting as well to round out the group?), Sawyer declined an invite, but might make end up there anyways, Desmond and Kate are headed there, and of course Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore will be there, along with Penny. We don't know yet where Sayid and Hurley are headed, but it wouldn't surprise me to see them end up there as well, possibly with Libby. That leaves us with Jack & Locke as the two primary characters who currently have no motivation to end up at the concert, although Desmond has clearly been working on both Jack and Locke, so he's got something in mind for the both of them. I gotta say, I still have absolutely no clue where they're going with this, but whatever it is, it definitely has a sense of urgency to it (probably because there's only one episode left).

-Loved the Ana Lucia cameo, and Hurley's non-chalant "Oh I didn't know Ana Lucia would be here" reaction. Really well done stuff. I wonder if Ben will come into play with any of this, or if his job was just to get Locke to start to believe.

-Speaking of Ben, poor guy can't even avoid getting his ass kicked in the Sideways world.

Alright, that's all I've got. I should have known when I stated this would probably be a short post that it would end up running about 3,500 words instead. Oops.

I would like to thank everyone for reading all of my inane ramblings over the past few years, and for all the discussion many of you have partaken in with me. Possibly the best thing about this show is the weekly conversations it leads to with fellow LOST viewers, and I know that this blog has at least helped facilitate some of those conversations on my end. I hope everyone enjoys the series finale, it will certainly be a bittersweet moment, as I don't know that we'll ever see another show quite like LOST again. I don't know what my plans are regarding a post after the finale. Generally I do a lot of speculation on where the show is heading, and since the show is over that won't quite work, now will it? Still, I think I should try and put something together, so we'll see what materializes. I don't know that it will be up the morning after like my posts usually are, since I may need some time to let my thoughts marinate. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what transpires. And as I mentioned earlier, don't forget about Chronologically LOST. I'm excited to share it with everyone, and I hope you all are able to enjoy the experience. Until next time, thanks for reading.